Things grow fast around here.

This tree magically appeared in our house a couple of nights ago. Just sprung up over night and it's about time too. It was supposed to grow at the beginning of the school year. You know, we are attending Quercus Alba Academy of Magic and what kind of school that is named after a tree wouldn't have one on its premises. I'm looking forward to all sorts of magical things happening to it throughout the year!

School room's coming along

David built shelves for us to help keep our school things organized and the transformation from playroom to school room is coming along. There are still plenty of toys in there but we are trying to keep them all on one side of the room. It's only somewhat successful as of yet, but I am hoping it will get better with time. After all it's been a play room for 9 years and only a school room for a few months.

too much candy

William has been complaining of an ear ache today.. He's pretty sure it's because his ear has had too much candy. HAHAHA!

I am smiling.

This is blurry, I know, but I just had to share. This smile just makes me laugh. This is William's "I am smiling" face whenever I try to take his picture.

Joshua Tree

A couple of days after Christmas we packed up a lunch, some snacks, a bunch of water and headed to Joshua Tree National Park. What a wonderful place to spend the day! The kids had the time of their lives hiking and climbing on all the rocks and it was a miracle that we made it home with only a few scrapes. Even William kept up for the most part. Perfect strangers would stop to watch the 4 of them climbing around. Most told us what wonderful climbers they were and how amazing that we let them climb so much, but I couldn't help but wonder what was really going through their heads....

Study Aid

Anna has been struggling to remember the second declension masculine for Latin class so today I gave her a free study aid.

She thought it was pretty funny and it seems to be doing the trick!

A Peaceful Christmas

Christmas this year was very quiet and simple. Other than going to church we stayed home all day and just enjoyed being together. Over the last couple of years we have tried really hard to scale down the amount of gifts we give to the kids. As a result we have saved a lot of money and it has been easier to stay focused on the true reason of the season.  I don't think our kids have suffered any ill effects from our smaller Christmases and I laughed when Alahna cheerfully announced that she got a "good haul" even though it was probably the fewest gifts she's ever received. 

Thanks to loving grandparents and aunts and uncles they still had plenty of things to open!

 

 

The stack of books the girls received. They got more excited about some of these than anything else!

The boys loved their knight costumes from Grandma and Grandpa! They are official dragon slayers now!

Alahna and Robert spent about an hour and a half building a Lego castle. It was fun to watch them work so well as a team.

Best Christmas Present Ever

Robert received an unexpected Christmas gift this year in the form of broken braces! They broke two days after Christmas and let me tell you he was not sad... at all! And the best part for him....they didn't have any openings to get them fixed for almost 3 weeks. I said to him today that was like a Christmas present. He said, "That is the best Christmas present ever!" David reminded him how important his braces are and Robert told us that he really does like them... just not putting them on... or wearing them.